The Path Only Moves Forward
by aSecondStory
Summary: Sirius is dead and Harry is in mourning. While drinking to his memory Harry discovers something is wrong with his animagus form.


Sirius was dead and Harry was in mourning. He felt guilty, even though he knew it wasn't really his fault. It was that bitch Bellatrix who killed him. Harry quietly swore to himself that no matter what. Even more important than Voldemort he would personally do his best to end her time on this earth. He looked at bottle of firewhiskey that was sticking partially out of his trunk. Hagrid had given it to him on the sly before he caught the train home for the year.

"Sometime you need to celebrate their memory and their life before you can heal"

Harry didn't want to heal or even worse move on. All he wanted to do was sit in the dark of his locked room and mope. His godfather was dead and he was currently receiving radio silence from his friends that was as complete as when Dobby was stealing his mail before second year. Despite that there was a voice in the back of his head that told him this was not how Sirius would want him to act. He would tell him to get drunk and pull some pranks or do something stupid in his honour, not hide in his room.

Giving in Harry cracked open the bottle and took a large swig before spluttering and coughing. Glaring at the bottle he cleared his throat and took several more large drinks of the potent whiskey. Feeling the effects already hitting his empty stomach he put the bottle down and transformed into his animagus form, flying up and perching on the top of the wardrobe. He eyed Hedwig's perch, having done away with her cage after finding himself as an owl and she was able to tell him of her hate for the wretched device, but she was out hunting for food. Settling down he reminisced of the first real interaction not through a few letters he had with his godfather after saving him from dementors at the end of third year.

It was early in the evening when the Dursley family plus one Harry Potter was sitting down to eat dinner that the knocking came from the front door. At first Vernon ignored it but the knocker was persistent and five minutes later whoever was outside was still knocking. Finally Vernon gave up.

"Boy" he grunted and jerked his head to the door. "Go get rid of whoever is at the door."

Harry silently got up from the table and proceeded to the front hall to open the door and tell whomever was there to kindly leave them alone. All thoughts of listening to his uncle and telling the knocker to shove off were quickly wiped from his mind when he was who was standing outside the door. It was his still newly discovered godfather Sirius Black.

"SIRIUS" he exclaimed loudly before he could stop himself. "What are you doing here?"

His godfather grinned at him. "I figured I should come and introduce myself to your cousins and hang out with you as well. You are going into your fourth year now and it's time you found yourself inducted into the Marauders. We were the same age as you are now when we got started."

By this time Vernon had gotten suspicious as to why Harry hadn't just slammed the door and come back but it was the joyous exclamation of a name that got him standing up and walking out of the dining room and towards the front door. He would not tolerate any other freaks in his His house but his face went pale when he recognized the man standing in the doorway. He may have trimmed the beard, cut the hair, and gotten clean clothes but this Sirius was none other than the mass murderer that had only recently mysteriously disappeared from the news. And now he was here in his house. Vernon got furious fast.

"What the hell are you doing here?" He yelled at the fugitive. Vernon Dursley despite his size was not dull in the slightest, his sharp mind let him rise in the ranks of his company. He made the connection between Harry being happy and Sirius Black being in his house and his anger overruled his common sense. "You are a freak as well" he roared. "Out, out, get your bloody self out of my house."

Harry Turned around upset to face his uncle, mouth opening but Sirius placed a hand on his shoulder and stood forward taking his wand and twirling it around his finger, grinning as Vernon nervously took a step back. "I'm glad to see that you recognize me so quickly. Let's clear some details up. Harry's parents were two of my best friends. I recently had the chance to make up my long neglected duties as godfather and one of the most important tasks for me is to insure his well being. Therefor here I am, I'll be dropping in everyday, taking Harry with me and teaching his many different things. And every day I will be here making sure that you are treating him as you would your own son. Understand me Dursley?" As Sirius spoke he kept walking forward and Vernon kept retreating until Sirius had his wand pointed under Vernon's throat while he was backed up against a wall. Vernon nervously agreed, eyes crossed, looking at the tip of his nose trying to see the wand under his chin.

"Good" Sirius withdrew his wand slipping it back into his pocket and walked back to Harry and led him outside. "What I am about to do is called apparition, I will be teleporting the both of us to my old family home. Got it?" He smiled at Harry who smiled back and nodded, so excited to be gone from the Dursleys.

With a loud crack the pair disappeared and reappeared in London, 12 Grimmauld Place to be precise. "This is my family home. I grew up here. I hated it then and still do. But if I am going to be staying close to you then I need a safe place to stay and this is fairly well defended and not well known either. I've been cleaning it up a bit so we do have some room."

Harry and Sirius walked up to the front door and walked in. Harry looked around wide eyed. He saw a troll leg stump and all sorts of other dark looking memorabilia, dust and cobwebs still hung in corners. Despite that he could see into the kitchen and it was clean and looked much lighter. He turned to his godfather.

"Thank you Sirius!" But why can't I just stay here with you" he asked?

"Its sucks I know prongslet but despite Dumbledore's usually garbage and avoidance he does actually have a point about you needing to stay with the Dursleys for at least a month during the summer. There are some wards there that react positively with you and give you some very strong protections. But just because you have to sleep there does not mean you will be spending much time. I've got plans for this summer. Before you get to the world cup I want you well on your way to being an animagus."

Harry was practically vibrating with excitement. A chance to be an animagus was not something he would turn up his nose at anyways but here was a chance to be closer to his father and his godfather. "Yes" he exclaimed joyfully! "Thats awesome, how do we start?"

"Well to do this the Marauder way we need to start by teaching you occlumency but before that I need to remove the trace from your wand." He winked at Harry, "perks of being an old family with a big library and questionable morals."

On top of the wardrobe Harry opened his owl eyes at the feeling of an odd tingling sensation in his lower body. Looking down he hooted loudly in alarm. Somehow his colouring had changed from a white to black. If that wasn't enough, he had become intangible, as if he were a ghost. The tingling sensation he had been feeling had been him slowly sinking into the wardrobe itself. He squawked fell of his perch, transforming as he tumbled through the air and landing with a thud in his human form.

"What the bloody hell" he murmured to himself before transforming and flying up to look at himself in the mirror in his room. Before this he had been a midsized snowy owl, just slightly smaller than Hedwig, much to her delight. Now he looked the same but his coloring was pitch black with a sickening purple outline on all of his feathers and seemed to glow over his talons. He touched down concentrating on staying on top of the table his mirror was mounted on. Landing Harry heard a creaking sound and started to smell decay.

Looking down he saw table directly under his talons had blackened and started to rot and decay and it was slowly starting to spread. Shocked he lost his concentrations and started floating ever so slightly above the table. As he disconnected the speed of decay slowed drastically until it stopped completely. Harry transformed back to examine the strange strain. The wood on the table was growing mold and had appeared to age greatly and go bad. First he tried a regular _reparo_ but the decay did nothing. Trying again he greatly overpowered the spell and still nothing happened. He decided to just cut off the bad areas with a few _diffindo_ 's and leave it at that.

Taking the piece of wood with him, he opened the window and jumped out, transforming and dropping the wood in the bushes. Flying always calmed him down and doing it as an owl only enhanced it. He briefly remembered how hard Sirius laughed when he saw how Hedwig took care of him after his first transformation. She taught him how to fly like a true owl, silent and fast. She also taught him how to take good care of himself as an owl, grooming, making a nest, and everything else an owl needed to know. When Sirius was able to stop laughing He told Harry that he was glad that at least one other person could be counted on to look out for his best interests. After that Harry was glad to see that the two got along great.

Harry was brought out of his thoughts by the sound of a bus honking at a car that cut it off. Looking down he was distracted by a screen showing an advertisement in a shop. It was for a new game called pokemon. As Harry watched the the weird creature started to glow then shift its shape until it evolved into a new more advanced form. Harry watched until the commercial was finished then flew back up into the sky and continued flying. The advertisement jogged his memory of a warning and a story that Sirius told him.

"Harry I need you to sit down and listen to me" Sirius stopped him as he was walking by. They went to the den which the house elf and finally cleaned after sirius threatened to give him clothes and to spread word of what a terrible house elf he was. They both knew he couldn't be trusted but Dobby had appeared and was willing to give them a hand in keeping an eye on Kreature as well as working around the house.

"Now that you have achieved your form and are starting to shift I want to tell you a story and give you a little warning. There is magic beyond what we know about animagus forms. They are intrinsically tied to our souls and our magic. Unfortunately there really isn't all that much information know about this. Animagus are rare and the ones that have this happen are even rarer. That said it happened to both me and your father so I want to explain it to you incase it ever happens to you. This way there is no need for panic." Sirius leaned back in his chair, his eyes misting as they always did when recalling times with James.

"I wasn't always a grim" he started as Harry stared at him in confusion. How could not have always been a grim, that was his form. "When James and I made our first transformation I was a Golden Retriever and James a young deer. I got my name because I was a dog. James got his name partially through hope and partially as a joke. He had these small nubs on the top of his head so we called him Prongs. It wasn't until sixth year when James really buckled down and matured and finally got his chance with Lily that he changed. His form matured and grew some fantastic antlers. My change happened later. I've already told you how your grandparents were killed by Voldemort. What I didn't mention was how much of a wake up call it was for me. Pardon the pun but I got serious." He gave Harry a wry grin. "After the funeral was when Albus talked to us about this prophecy that he had heard. He refused to give me the wording but James and Lily were pretty shaken up afterwards. It was then I made a promise to myself that no matter what I would do my best to protect them and eventually you as well. Imagine my surprise when the next time i shifted I found myself with a new form. That of a grim. James thought it was great, Moony was confused and wondered how it happened, Wormtail just shuddered and moved farther away."

He grimaced as if there was a terrible taste in his mouth at the mention of the rat. "James, Moony, Lily and I all tried to do some research in our spare time. We couldn't find much but what we found was very interesting. Some animagus were able to found that after a major change in their life and attitude they were faced with evolved form, usually with some fun gifts attached depending on what was the cause of the change. I personally found that I was able to hide in some shadows, sense the fear in others and that fear didn't affect me as much, probably why I lasted so well in in Azkaban.

Thinking about the Sirius's evolution he figured that it was the same with him. He already knew three changes his form had so far. Colouring was the most obvious but his intangibility was another as was the the ability to seemingly decay items by touch alone. Harry wondered if he had a similar sensing ability as well. In the back of his mind there was tugging that once he realized it was there was brought to the forefront. He opened himself up to the scene and immediately froze, overwhelmed by the sorrow and the depression that he could feel around him. He stayed that way for a long period of time until his mind was able to deal with all of this extra information and flew back to the Dursleys.

It was there he found out that if he is in one place he begins to get more details about who is depressed and what is causing it. He was surrounded by it and changing back into his human form didn't help. Downstairs Vernon was depressed because work was going slow and he needed it to to pick up, he had already had a talking with his boss. Then neighbor next door just found out her husband had been having an affair for years and was likely going to leave her for the woman, was she not good enough for him? Across the street there was a teenager his age who was being bullied in school. The kids would call him names and wreck his belongings, he had nowhere to turn, it wasn't his fault he was different.

When Hedwig returned early in the morning she found her human and sometimes owl curled in his bed asleep with tear tracks on his face. She landed on shoulder and cooed softly brushing his head with her wings. When Harry woke she had gone to sleep on his shoulder. Quietly and softly he put her on the bed next to him so he wouldn't bump into if he moved then got up. Later when she woke up he explained everything that had happened to him over the past night. She did her best to comfort him but there was only so much she could do.

The first month of summer had finished and Harry still hadn't heard from his friends regarding anything other than empty platitudes. He wasn't doing great either. If it were not for Hedwig he probably would have died at some points. She forced him to get up and eat something when he could. On the days that his depression grew too strong she would go out and hunt, bringing something back and making him shift and eat. On days when he would go out of bed they usually went flying for hours.

Harry knew he was depressed, he even knew it was to an unhealthy degree but he just couldn't seem to fight it off. It didn't help that he had never gotten any help for any depression he had suffered previously, which he could now admit that yes, he had been depressed often over the past few years. And the ability to sense everyone arounds depression just made it worse. It felt like every time he got a little better someone came into range that was a black cloud of depression and he relapsed.

Tonight he had enough of everything. When he went out flying with Hedwig he veered off and landed on a bridge instead of just going on for hours. He shifted back and sat with his legs dangling over the edge. Hedwig hooted angrily and landed on his lap barking at him furiously. He subconsciously lifted his hand and began stroking her feathers. With no one around his thoughts cleared slightly and he really thought about what he was about to do. Was it worth it he wondered.

So lost in his thoughts was Harry that he failed to notice the darkening turn his thoughts began to take as someone walking past headed in his direction.

"Excuse me, But you know that this height won't do the job right? It's probably more likely that you would end up crippled in some way and I'd bet that would probably be much worse no?"

Surprised Harry turned around to look at whoever interrupted him and examined them. It was a young lady, probably in her very early twenties. She also had sad, haunted eyes like him but hers were clearer in some puzzling way. He looked deeper, at her depression. She was suffering. She recently lost both of her parents, lost her job and broke up with her fiance. Yet despite all her emotional pain she was smiling and hidden deep in her depression there was a core of steel.

"How can you just keep smiling" he blurted out, her smiling confusing him. The stranger was silent for a moment then hopped up and swung her legs over the side just like him.

"Because I want to. I know it sounds trite and really doesn't seem to change anything but there are words I read in a book a while ago." She closed her eyes and recited from memory " _I could wallow in my depression and let it control me but I want to be happy, I want to smile. So no matter how hard it is I wake up and look in the mirror and tell myself Today I will be happy, and I smile, no matter what happens that day, I smile through it. And you know what? Before long I was so focused on happy thoughts that the bad faded to the back. Oh it was still there and I still suffered but I had my balance now, it doesn't overwhelm me._ So that is what I do. I force myself to smile, I write reminders to look up jokes to laugh at. I surround myself with friends who care and look out for me." She smiled at harry who grunted.

"But what if don't want to?" He asked, hating the weakness evident in his voice. "Everything would be so much easier if it was done".

She put her arm around Harry and pulled him into an one armed hug. "Maybe for you, but what about everyone left behind? What about this beautiful owl here? And your friends? Do you think it would be just fine for them?"

Harry opened his eyes wide. He hadn't even thought of what would happen to the people he cared about. Hedwig would probably die with him, the familiar bond enforcing that. Hermione, Luna, Neville, all the Weasleys, Tonks, and Moony would all hurt by his choice, As selfish as he might want to be he couldn't do that to them, especially to Hedwig. He could feel some tears pool at the corners of his eye as he leaned into this strangers hug. "Thank you" he spoke softly but no less strongly. Hedwig hooted in agreement.

"You are welcome" she replied and the two of them sat there on the edge of the bridge for a while just looking out at nothing. Eventually the stranger looked at her watch and noticed the time. "I should probably get home" she said as she lifted up her legs and swung back over the barrier. "Are you good to get home?" Harry nodded his head. "Great, I'll leave this with you. Give me a call if you ever need someone to talk to.: With that she left but not before slipping her card into his pocket.

Harry watched her go and once she was out of sight he slipped off the bridge shifting as he did so and took off for home. Along the way he apologized and thanked Hedwig for everything she had done for him over this past month. She graciously accepted it and they flew home together, heart much lighter than it had been in a long time.

When Harry woke the next morning he remembered what the woman had said and walked over to the mirror. "I will be happy, I will smile:" He repeated that as a mantra several time before going over to his desk and looking at his pile of mail. Most of it had gone unread. Deciding it was probably a good thing to go through it he started reading them. They were letters from all his close friends, the ministry six and, even some from members of the DA. All of them were expressing concern over his health and adn the fact that they hadn't heard from him. Getting out a quill and some parchment Harry began writing letters to everyone who had written to him, thanking them for their concern, stating that he was doing better now and asking after them. When he had finished he gave the letters to Hedwig who nipped his hand affectionately before heading out to do his deliveries.

His next while preceded in similar fashions. He would wake up tell himself he wanted to be happy and to smile, answer his mail, do his homework, go flying with Hedwig. He had his relapses but he found it got easier and easier to pull himself out of any ruts he fell into. Eventually he found himself being escorted to Number Twelve Grimmauld place. His friends apologized for withholding information but it turns out they really didn't have much to share with him anyways,. They too, were out of the loop. His schedule remained much the same but now included time goofing around with friends. His friendship grew stronger with everyone he was writing letters to. They would be ready and have his back this upcoming year. Ready for anything.

Things were going finally going much better and it was the night before he would return to Hogwarts. Harry knew he was in a much better headspace than he had been in a long time. For the first time in a long time he felt actual happiness accompanying his determination to stop Voldemort. He started preparation and he had friends and allies, even more than last year. He would be ready. He smiled at Hedwig and shifted in preparation of going out for their nightly flight. This time however Hedwig hooted excitedly at him and flew joyous circles around him. Curious as to what she saw Harry lifted off and looked at himself in the mirror. Harry nearly fell out of the air in surprise at what he saw. Once again he had changed. He was still the same size but his color was back to white and instead of purple his feathers were outlined in gold. He felt incredible and as he flew out the window accompanied by Hedwig he finally felt ready to take on the next year and do what needed to be done. He still mourned Sirius but knew how happy he along with his parents would be when they looked down at him now.

He let out a joyous hoot as he flew, determined and ready.

Hey! So thanks for reading! I got this prompt from somewhere on r/hpfanfiction so thanks for that idea. Im still working on my other story but life eh. I hope you enjoy.


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